


Silver Fox

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [34]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heist, Hidden Injury, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Other, Peter Nureyev Needs a Hug, just. a lot of getting his personal issues soothed, light fluff, like it's in there but this is mostly angst with a lot of comfort at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: “Captain Aurinko said I’d stand out too much if I appeared too young,” Nureyev returned with practiced calmness. “I am merely following orders.”Nureyev’s masks were a well curated lot. His veneer of calm was always consistent and always rested upon the same pedestal of an equally curated face. Juno had a feeling that the mask itself wasn’t cracking so much as its plinth, which resembled Nureyev’s usual face in all ways except for the streak of gray hair he had been instructed not to hide.His smile was a little too terse and his hands were a little too tense for Juno to believe him.Rec fill for @biclarriselarue on tumblr!!
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492
Comments: 31
Kudos: 158





	Silver Fox

**Author's Note:**

> hoooo boy this one's soft guys but make sure to check the content warnings!!
> 
> Content warnings for blood, minor injury (not described), self-hatred, issues with body image, nureyev-typical ageism, vomiting mention

Juno should have known something was wrong when Nureyev rolled out of bed at four in the morning.

Nureyev’s sleep schedule, if he ever had one, was an anomaly that Juno didn’t usually witness. If he slumped off to the shower or the ship’s gym at an odd hour, he usually did so without waking Juno. In the younger days of their relationship, he might leave behind a note, though the gentle routine of trust took the place of these hand sketched hearts over time. 

Occasionally, he might rise particularly early on the morning of a heist, but even then, he usually dragged Juno with him so he could have someone at his side while he rambled through a verbal version of all the notes he had taken when learning his part. Juno didn’t need to be a detective to know it was for his nerves. He also didn’t need to be a detective to know Nureyev didn’t want to admit it, so it was best to sit on the edge of the bath and try to fall back asleep as discreetly as possible while Nureyev ran through the plan.

With all of that in mind, Juno couldn’t see a decent reason for Nureyev to have risen at such an hour without bothering to shake Juno by the shoulder and ask if he’d lend an ear.

His first thought was that the hotel bedroom might have stirred up a bad memory or dream, but there were far too many sounds of movement from the bathroom for his waking to be accidental. From the smell of it, he was already beginning to run through his million step skincare routine. 

“Nureyev?” He managed to slur out, the syllables running into each other.

“Go back to sleep, dear,” Nureyev called, sounding far too awake.

“Nureyev, why the hell are you awake? The heist’s in four hours,” Juno grumbled his way through a yawn.

Nureyev didn’t reply, though Juno heard the familiar sound of hairspray, then a discouraged huff.

“Are you okay?” Juno asked again.

Nureyev audibly sighed.

“It’s nothing of any matter. You don’t need to worry about a thing. I’m just starting my makeup early, that’s all,” Nureyev brushed him off.

For a master thief, Nureyev was a terrible liar. Juno supposed a certain amount of his skill came from allowing no one to be privy to his routines and idiosyncrasies. Being close enough to share a bed with him had likely done as much of a number on his acting as anything else.

“I’m up,” Juno groaned upon rolling out of bed, grimacing as his knee audibly cracked.

“Love,” Nureyev warned.

“Nope,” Juno huffed. “You’re not getting rid of me.”

“You’re asleep on your feet, dear,” Nureyev protested once Juno slumped his way into the bathroom, arms falling around Nureyev’s waist and head into his shoulder.

“Whatever,” Juno murmured.

“Good morning, love,” Nureyev chuckled, a little too thin for Juno’s liking. As asleep as he was, he wasn’t sure how much he could do to patch over whatever was eating at the back of Nureyev’s mind. “I didn’t expect you to be mourning my absence already.”

“It’s not morning,” Juno grumbled.

“I’m afraid the clock would beg to differ,” Nureyev returned.

Juno caught the reflection of his smile in the mirror and narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t exactly memorized Nureyev’s face, but he’d joined him on enough heists to know exactly which smile was reserved for their marks and which was reserved for him. The smile he had known between untidy laughs and gentle kisses and lost in thought across the pillow from him was nowhere to be found, replaced by the dead-eyed expression of a newscaster.

“Why are you up so early?” Juno pressed, trying his best to phrase it as a groan so Nureyev wouldn’t be too suspicious of the interrogation.

“I already told you, dear,” Nureyev sighed. Juno didn’t miss the way his shoulders went stiff beneath him. “I’m going to start on my makeup.”

“It can’t take that long,” Juno huffed. “Mine takes twenty minutes. Thirty, if I wanna look as stuffy as the rest of the rich assholes getting up at the crack of dawn for an auction.”

“Thirty,” Nureyev repeated with a disbelieving huff. “Well, not all of us can be blessed with your roguish good looks, now can we?”

“Nureyev,” Juno protested.

“And if your makeup is only going to take a half hour, I don’t see why you shouldn’t go back to bed until then,” Nureyev cut him off. “Truly, dear, I don’t think it’s—”

“Is this about the dye?”

Nureyev’s hand went tight around his foundation.

“Captain Aurinko said I’d stand out too much if I appeared too young,” Nureyev returned with practiced calmness. “I am merely following orders.”

Nureyev’s masks were a well curated lot. His veneer of calm was always consistent and always rested upon the same pedestal of an equally curated face. Juno had a feeling that the mask itself wasn’t cracking so much as its plinth, which resembled Nureyev’s usual face in all ways except for the streak of gray hair he had been instructed not to hide.

His smile was a little too terse and his hands were a little too tense for Juno to believe him.

“I think it looks nice,” Juno offered, though he kept his compliments to a minimum, lest Nureyev think them facetious. 

“Dear,” Nureyev sighed.

“Would I lie to you?”

“Do you think it would be terrible if I tried to cover it with spray?” Nureyev pressed forward.

“We’re gonna be the youngest ones in the place by twenty years,” Juno reminded him.

“You ought to go back to bed,” Nureyev swallowed. “You needn’t be concerned with my shortcomings when you could be asleep.”

“Too late,” Juno yawned, trying and failing to pull Nureyev closer for a hug. Instead, he found himself rendered off balance by the exhaustion that had yet to slink away from his shoulders, and with a half-smile on his lips, Nureyev guided him to a seated position on the half of the counter not dominated by the scattered contents of his makeup bag.

“You’re going to injure yourself, dear detective,” Nureyev chuckled, and though the sound was weak, Juno found some comfort in the knowledge that it was genuine.

“Whatever,” he huffed, leaning against the wall. “I’m not gonna leave you by yourself. I dunno if you wanna talk about it—”

“I don’t.”

“But I’m not gonna let you be alone anyway,” Juno insisted.

Nureyev fixed him with a look he wished he could place. It was soft in a way Juno doubted he had ever seen before, even if something painful seemed to drag at the circles below his eyes. Between the streak of gray above one temple and the way Nureyev reached over to squeeze his hand, Juno was struck with the thought that the scene could very well have been pulled from the kind of distant, domestic future he never thought he’d want to have.

“I love you,” Nureyev smiled. Juno breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed it was just a little lopsided, unlike the false and even expressions he mustered when trying to bury something away.

“I love you too. I’m gonna warn you—” Juno broke off to yawn. “I think I’m gonna be awake for another thirty seconds tops, so if you want me to say something nice about you, just—I dunno, tap my shoulder twice or something.”

Nureyev laughed, barely giving Juno time to return the chuckle before tapping his shoulder.

“God, that was a bad idea, I’m not in my brain right now,” Juno groaned. “You’ve got a good face.”

Nureyev tapped his shoulder again, but turned back to his makeup with a wave of his hand.

“If you want to sleep up there, don’t let me stop you,” Nureyev smiled, even if it wavered a little upon meeting his reflection in the eye.

“Honest to God, I like your hair like that,” Juno managed through a yawn. “Handsome son of a bitch.”

He didn’t particularly remember his eyes wincing shut against the white light of the bathroom, though he knew for certain that at some point before drifting off entirely, Nureyev pressed a kiss to his forehead.

The auction turned out to be a lost cause thanks to an elderly collector with pockets deeper than they had anticipated. Nureyev, gripping the insides of his blazer’s pockets a little too tight and holding his head high in defiance of the exhaustion that so clearly weighed on his shoulders, had muttered out vague instructions about distracting the buyer and returning to the hotel room while Nureyev took care of the matter.

Juno had expected it to be easy, even with fewer hours of sleep than he would have wanted. However, that expectation did nothing to change the fact at hand when he found himself alone in their hotel room. Nureyev, who made a point of being punctual, was over a half hour late to their rendezvous and wasn’t picking up his comms.

He knew better than to pace a hole in the carpet when he might still need to run, so instead he busied hands that desperately needed to hang onto something by putting away the contents of Nureyev’s bags scattered over the bathroom counter.

Juno had often joked that Nureyev used too many hand creams for his own good, but he counted at least seven travel containers, three of them medicated, before getting truly worried. The makeup wasn’t much better, though he found himself more concerned about the plethora of makeup wipes stuffed into the trash, as if he had done and done away with at least two full faces of makeup before either running out of time or becoming complacent with a face he had still eyed distastefully in the mirror that morning.

Before his gut could twist any more, Nureyev was kind enough to bring him a distraction in the form of a pounding fist upon the door.

“Hey,” Juno greeted, the word falling as Peter all but jogged past him. “Nureyev?”

“Doing fine,” Nureyev returned from the bathroom, word clipped. “Minor injury, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Are you sure?” Juno returned upon closing the door.

“It’s nothing that should be a problem,” Nureyev added, voice a little too strained for Juno’s liking.

“What happened?”

The door closed. Juno swallowed.

“Nicked by a plasmacutter, I’m afraid,” Nureyev sighed. “It was an amateur's mistake, so I would greatly appreciate it if we kept this injury of mine between ourselves for now. It’ll be of no matter until the car manages to arrive this afternoon. Even if all doesn’t go to plan, the fake I planted should buy us some time.”

“Nureyev,” Juno returned slowly, though he had a hunch the word may have just sounded slow in comparison to what was nearly a ramble.

“I’m fine—” Nureyev stifled a gasp. “Dear.”

Juno sat on the foot of the bed, eye raking up and down the bathroom door like it might give him an answer. All he earned for his trouble was a blank slate of metal that seemed almost mocking, in a way. A distant memory of another stifled injury and another locked door tried to tug at the back of his mind, but he pushed it away. 

He took a deep breath. He crossed the room. He knocked.

“Nureyev,” he began. “Can I come in?”

Nureyev was quiet for just a moment too long, and when his voice finally came through the door, it sounded resigned.

“There’s a lot of blood,” he warned. “It’s nothing I shouldn’t be able to handle on my own, so if that’s going to—”

“Yes or no?”

Nureyev took a deep, wincing breath.

“Yes.”

Juno pushed the door open slowly, though his hand fell away from the metal at the sight of Nureyev doing his best to use the automatic stitching machine from the first aid kit on a gash that had rendered the lower half of his button down a deep scarlet. As tempting as losing his lunch seemed at the sight of the injury, he managed to steel himself, taking a seat upon the counter where he had done so the morning before.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed upon a closer look. “That’s—ugh.”

“Nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” Nureyev grimaced, wiping his hands on the washcloth he had been using to do away with excess blood. From the looks of it, the cloth hadn’t improved much. “I received a nearly identical injury about fifteen years ago, and it was hardly any trouble.”

“I’m gonna get you on the bed, alright?” Juno swallowed. “Probably easier to use the machine like that, or whatever.”

“Are you sure helping me is wise?” Nureyev winced.

“Better than trying to fix it yourself,” he grimaced.

Nureyev opened his mouth to refute, but Juno only caught the reflection of the gesture, for he had already jogged off with enough towels to keep the hotel sheets clean. When he was sure enough that the room wouldn’t resemble a crime scene by the time they left, he returned for Nureyev.

For as many reservations as he had about receiving any help, he all but fell into Juno’s grasp, muttering protests about the injury’s apparent lack of severity or the potential of a bloodstain on Juno’s shirt all the way to the bed.

“Dear,” he complained upon being set down, batting Juno’s hands away to deal with his buttons himself. 

“You got stabbed,” Juno returned flatly.

“It was a stupid mistake, I should have known better than—”

“Nureyev,” Juno cut him off gently, though when he found he had nothing with which to follow his warning, he merely pressed a kiss to the streak of gray just above his forehead.

Nureyev sighed and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Fifteen years ago, this same damned injury was hardly any trouble at all,” he sighed as Juno began a gentle exam of the wound.

“Yeah, well fifteen years ago, my go-to liquor was basically rat poison,” Juno huffed. “People change.”

Nureyev groaned, whether at Juno’s remark or at his touch, he could not tell. Either way, he pulled both hands away as if he had been burned, only waiting for another deep breath as his cue to continue the cautious examination before he could be certain about using the stitching mechanism.

“I don’t know why Captain Aurinko ever saw fit to keep me around after Zolotovna’s ball,” he huffed.

“Because you’re the best damn thief I’ve ever met,” Juno returned evenly, trying his best to pretend the words hadn’t grated on something usually soft and warm within his chest.

“It’s just a matter of time before—”

Nureyev broke off with a quieted gasp.

“Are you okay?”

Nureyev nodded, though his jaw was still taut and his chest still rising and falling with deep, pained breaths he couldn’t manage to suppress. Juno waited for his pulse to stop palpably racing beneath the hand resting upon his sternum before continuing.

“Can I use the machine?”

Nureyev swallowed, then nodded.

“There,” Juno breathed as the stitches ran up the injury, remembering the faint, nearly pleasant buzz from a hallway a thousand years ago, when Rex Glass had smiled at him and left him with the neatest scar he had ever borne. “Better?”

Nureyev nodded, testing an elbow in an attempt to get up. It failed before Juno could even stop him, and from the disgusted look creeping onto Nureyev’s face, he was pretty sure he had taken it personally.

“Dammit,” he hissed, barely audible as Juno tried his best to clean up the towels, though after a few minutes clearly wasted in trying to do much with them, settled with a pile on the bathroom floor and made his way back to the bedroom.

“Nureyev?” He called when he returned to the room, only to find Nureyev curled in on his side and facing the wall. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Much,” he returned blankly.

Juno stretched out at his side, not touching, but close. Nureyev didn’t budge, though his shoulders deflated upon letting out a breath.

“Are you gonna talk to me about what happened at some point?” Juno asked slowly.

“It was foolish,” Nureyev shook his head. 

“I don’t care,” Juno returned, words as gentle as he could manage. “Can I see you?”

Nureyev rolled over, but he didn’t waste much time with eye contact before letting himself fall into Juno’s side. Juno kept his hands aloft until he knew for certain he wouldn’t brush the bandages, at which point he let one hand fall into Nureyev’s hair while the other rubbed a gentle line up and down his back.

“Hey,” he smiled. “Good to see you.”

“Why do you waste your time on me, love?”

Juno blinked.

“What?”

“I—God, I’m an idiot,” Nureyev huffed. “I was feeling rather terrible about the matter with the dye, for one, and I was eager to try to reclaim some of my dignity. I ended up biting off more than I could chew when approached by a handful of security guards and was injured.”

“That’s a hell of an injury, how many—”

“Four,” Nureyev swallowed.

“Shit,” Juno breathed. “You know you could’ve called for help or something, right?”

“It’s a little difficult to call for help when fighting four guards, Juno,” Nureyev tried and failed to chuckle, his smile audibly fading. “I shouldn’t have been injured in the first place, and even then, you shouldn’t have needed to go to any of the trouble you did. I’ve sustained the same injury before.”

“Nureyev, you’re not gonna heal as fast as you did fifteen years ago,” Juno returned gently, resuming the path of his hand up and down Nureyev’s spine, as if that would soothe the words. “That doesn’t—I dunno—make you worse at your job or anything. It just happens.”

Nureyev didn’t seem to have a response for that, merely breathing out the remainder of his tension into Juno’s chest.

“I still love you,” Juno added. Even though he didn’t feel like he should need to say it, that didn’t stop him. “It’s okay to not feel great about all this. If you ever need to talk about it or anything, you’ve got me right here.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you?” Nureyev sighed, words muffled into Juno’s shirt.

“You know there’s not a good answer for that,” Juno smiled, letting his focus drift from the hand on Nureyev’s back long enough to run his fingertips over Nureyev’s scalp until he let out a soft, relaxed hum.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I woke up to do my makeup this morning,” Nureyev murmured. “I just anticipated it would take more time—to balance out the lapse in my hair, I mean.”

“Sleep would probably help just as much,” Juno offered. “And I wasn’t lying when I said I like your hair.”

Nureyev scoffed.

“You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Nureyev, you ever heard of a silver fox?” Juno chuckled

“Juno Steel, if this is some kind of—”

“It’s a compliment,” Juno broke him off, laughing once more when the movement of his fingertips upon his scalp made Nureyev’s huff turn into a happy hum once more. “Not every guy can wear gray hair as well as you can.”

“As much as I adore that you prefer it, I can’t say the same for those who I could have stolen from if I looked but a decade younger,” Nureyev grimaced.

“Then you’re trying to steal from the wrong people,” Juno insisted. “I don’t think it’s wrong to want to dye your hair. You just don’t need to be this worried about it, especially if you’re gonna get hurt.”

“A simple mistake,” he mumbled.

“Which is okay to make,” Juno added. “Getting olderI mean, it’s just a thing that happens. You work with it. You work around it. Doesn’t make you useless or a worse person or whatever. It just means you made it another year, and hell, with lives like ours, I’d say that’s something to be proud of.”

“My partner the orator,” Nureyev smiled into his chest, squirming up to press a kiss to the skin exposed by Juno’s collar. “Thank you, love.”

“Anytime,” Juno returned with a kiss to the top of his head. “Really. Anytime you need to talk about something like this. No shame.”

“Juno, my dear, I am drowning in shame at all times,” Nureyev sighed, though his voice was tinged with enough of a laugh for Juno not to worry too much.

“Even if you want me to help with your hair dye,” Juno added.

“Beg pardon?”

“Well, so long as it makes you comfortable, you can use whatever products you like,” Juno shrugged. “But if you ever want help with it some time, maybe just to associate it with positive feelings so it’s not something you just have to do, I can always give you a hand with that.”

“I—” Nureyev broke off. “I think I might wait a few days before redoing the dye, if you don’t mind. Perhaps just as an experiment.”

“Nureyev,” Juno breathed.

“And if I hate it, you’re entirely invited to help me cover it up again,” he added quickly.

“I’m proud of you,” he smiled. “Can you promise me something?”

Nureyev hummed attentively.

“You’re gonna get that stab wound checked out. I don’t care if you didn’t need to fifteen years ago.”

“Fine,” Nureyev sighed, though he didn’t sound utterly heartbroken. “Can you promise me something?”

“Sure.”

“You will never, under any circumstances, blaster to your head, call me a ‘silver fox’ out of the privacy of our own quarters,” Nureyev tried his best to say with a sneer at the idea of such a matter, but it broke away into enough of a laugh that Juno couldn’t find it within himself to be offended.

“And in the privacy of our own quarters?”

Nureyev rolled his eyes.

“We’ll see if you’re that lucky ever again,” he huffed.

“You know, Nureyev,” Juno began, trying and failing to stifle a teasing grin. “I’ve heard it said that good men get better with age.”

“Hush,” Nureyev groaned, feigning a playful shove.

“No fair,” Juno snorted. “You got stabbed, so I can’t fight back.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I just finished playing peekaboo with your small intestine—”

“And you were very brave for doing so, dear,” Nureyev returned patiently. “Are you going to keep playing with my hair or not?”

Juno rolled his eyes, but his fingers got back to their work anyway.

“Much better,” Nureyev chuckled, letting his fond smile press into Juno’s chest as he ran the streak of gray through his fingers.

The pair spent either minutes or hours in a gentle silence as Nureyev’s breathing relaxed and his heartbeat palpably fell back towards something that was almost calm. After a while longer, he wrapped the arm laying on Juno’s chest around his side to get a little closer, and some time after that, let out the sweetest sounding yawn Juno might have heard in his entire life.

“Juno,” he began, words blurring. “Will you wake me up when the car arrives?”

“Yeah,” Juno returned. “I’ve got an alarm. Are you still doing okay?”

Nureyev hummed his confirmation, eyes still shut.

Juno merely nodded, and once he felt Nureyev go relaxed, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the gray streak he wore upon his head like a crown.

**Author's Note:**

> man :,)
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill steal all your spoons
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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